RGSSALibraryCatalogue

Saturday, 31 March 2012

It’s April Fools’ Day: time for what the French call poissons d’avril!

"A bit hard to swallow"

So let’s have some geese.

I came across the curious offering below when
I was trying to figure out how to catalogue an item on the confluence of the
Murray and the Darling and concluding you can’t, because neither the Library of
Congress nor the National Library of Australia have managed to establish
authorised subject terms for the concept. However.

Cairo,
Illinois: “Goose Capital of the World,” at the confluence of the Mississippi
and Ohio Rivers.
[Roswell, N.M.] All American Publishing Co. [1973?]. col. map; 44 x 29 cm.

Any more? Yep, I found one. One of
our 19th-century works of exploration is by Aubyn Trevor-Battye, a naturalist
and explorer whose travels took him to Kolguyev Island in the arctic regions of
Russia:

Trevor-Battye, Aubyn,
1855-1922. Ice-bound on Kolguev : a chapter in the exploration of Arctic Europe,
to which is added a record of the natural history of the island.
Westminster : Constable, 1895.

He describes the local people, the Nenets (whom
he refers to as Samoyed) who came to the island in summer to graze their reindeer
and trap geese to trade. Trevor-Battye’s is an interesting story: he travelled
widely and finally died in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, a far cry from the
chill of the arctic islands!

Well, it is April 1st, so I’ve got to say it:
the author’s name makes it better!

So, getting carried away, let’s look for some
actual poissons!

We do have some marvellous works of
exploration in French or translated from the French but alas, I couldn't find
anything which mentions poissons. But
here are a few of the battier fishy ones:

Tennent, James Emerson, Sir, 1804-1869. Sketches
of the natural history of Ceylon : with narratives and anecdotes illustrative of the habits and instincts of
the mammalia, birds, reptiles, fishes, insects, &c. : including a monograph
of the elephant and a description of the
mode of capturing and training it. London : Longman, Green, Longman,
and Roberts, 1861.

Hefffalumps and fish? I must be making it up?
No, I’m not! ’Cos here’s another one:

Williamson, Thomas, fl. 1807-1810; Howitt,
Samuel, 1765?-1822. Oriental field sports : being a complete, detailed, and accurate description of the wild sports of the East;
and exhibiting, in a novel and interesting manner, the natural history of the
elephant ... as likewise the different species of feathered game, fishes, and
serpents. The whole interspersed with a variety of original, authentic and
curious anecdotes taken from the manuscript and designs of Captain Thomas
Williamson ; the drawings by Samuel Howitt, made uniform in size, and engraved
by the first artists. 2nd ed. London : H.R. Young, 1819.

And what about Australia? Here’s a great
title:

Stead, David G. (David George), b. 1877. The
beaked salmon Gonorhynchus gonorhynchus (Linnaeus) : its distribution in the waters of New South Wales. Sydney
: William Applegate Gullick, Government Printer, 1908.

"The Famous Australian Beaked Salmon"

Beaked
salmon? Beaked? No, I’m sure it’s very scientific! But gee, just when I
was feeling ashamed of myself for laughing, and had decided that that the Stead
in question (“Naturalist to the Board of Fisheries for
New South Wales”) was a very serious, scholarly fellow, along came this one:

Stead, David G. (David George), b. 1877. The
edible fishes of New South Wales : their present importance and their
potentialities. Sydney : Government of the State of New South Wales, 1908.

Potentialities? ...Oh.

So let’s get out there and eat ’em, folks!

And now we find...

Harald’s at it, off our shores (did he come all
the way from Denmark to do it?)

(The H.M.S. Southampton of the title is presumably
the fourth ship of that name: “The fourth Southampton was a Town-class light
cruiser launched in 1912 ... She fought at the battle of Jutland. ... On 26 May
1916 she was damaged by a mine. She was repaired and survived the war.
Southampton was sold for scrapping on 13 July 1926” (Wikipedia). Presumably
‘Banderas” went ashore to do his slayings: one can't quite imagine him taking
pot-shots from the deck, or slinging a line over the side of a Royal Navy
vessel, the captain wouldn't have approved. Unless he was the captain.)

Adrian’s hard at it off the coast
of Africa, jolly good show, sir! And congratters on that romantic title!

Doyle,
Adrian Conan. Heaven has
claws. London : Murray, 1952.

(According to the Antiquarian Angler it’s about “Big game
fishing off the African coast. Adventures in the coral islands of the Mafia
Channel, the seas of Zanzibar, Kilwa Kisiwani and the ruins of the Palace of
Songa Manara.” www.antiquarianangler.com)

And
there’s a Welshman in Scandinavia, not only eating ’em but carrying out serious
study as well. Did he dissect them and then eat them, or...?

Lloyd, L.
(Llewelyn), 1792?-1876. Scandinavian adventures : during a residence
of upwards of twenty years; representing
sporting incidents, and subjects of natural history, and devices for entrapping
wild animals. With some account of the northern fauna. London : R.
Bentley, 1854.

Over
California-ay-aye way, Horace is at it, too. Huntin’ and fishin’, yep!

(Ooh, look, it’s a Colonial edition, so us lesser
breeds without the law are entitled to have a read of it!)

There’s
lots more but that’s more than enough. If you want to know what else we’ve got,
including, yes, some on trout, try the catalogue at: http://rgssa.slimlib.com.au:81/vufind/ Personally, I can come at catching them in order
to sustain life, but is there anything sillier than hurling a minute, laboriously
tied thingo on the end of a very long string at an uninterested fish that knows
perfectly well that it bears no relation whatsoever to its normal food, and may
one time out of three thousand, if very bored or very curious, snap at it just
for fun? And then throwing the fish back? Well, hitting a very small ball with a very
long stick, possibly. Although possibly not, when you consider that the GIANT
rainbow trout at Rotorua happily eat cake from the tourists’ fingers, or
certainly did last time I was there. One for you, Marie Antoinette!

The
recipe above is for kiddies. Basically, if your French isn’t quite up to it,
use a chocolate cake mix to bake a cake in the shape of a fish. When cool,
slice banana for the scales and add a Smartie for the eye. Easy-peasy! And make
sure a grown up supervises!!

Giving
and eating chocolate fish (very large ones) on 1st April really is a French
tradition. Try an Internet search under poissons d’avril and you’ll find
lots of refs. When I lived in Paris there was a large sweet shop in our quartier
that my impoverished student mates and I couldn’t possibly afford to shop at.
The chocolate fish were very shiny, beautifully modelled, and at least 30
centimetres long. Dark chocolate. Honest! The ones in the pic below actually
don’t look nearly as up-market, but they are genuine: